Decades-old Albuquerque motel murder solved, Illinois man charged in 1983 killing

A 71-year-old Nevada woman found dead in an Albuquerque motel room more than four decades ago has become the focus of a newly filed murder case against a 73-year-old man now living in Illinois. Albuquerque police say Charlie Brown Jr., of Champaign, Illinois, was charged in the 1983 killing of Agnes Tybo, whose death at the old Sundowner Motel sat unresolved for years.

Tybo was in Albuquerque in November 1983 with her brother, visiting family and attending the Indian National Finals Rodeo at Tingley Coliseum. Officers responding to the Sundowner Motel at 6101 Central Ave. NE found her dead on the floor of Room 252 after a motel employee discovered the body. The Office of the Medical Investigator later ruled the death a strangulation homicide. Tybo and her sister were staying in adjacent rooms, and the property where the motel once stood is now an apartment complex.

Investigators also documented several odd pieces of physical evidence that survived the scene. Tybo’s missing purse was found in the bed of a dump truck parked in the motel lot, and a white cotton towel was recovered near her belongings. Witnesses reported seeing a man trying to enter motel rooms, and police circulated a composite sketch. Even with those leads, the case went cold.

The breakthrough came in 2021, when a civilian investigator reviewed the file and submitted original evidence for advanced forensic testing. In July 2022, the National DNA Index System notified Albuquerque police of a state-to-state database match between crime scene evidence and an Illinois offender profile tied to Brown. Detectives then traveled to Champaign and obtained a direct DNA standard from him.

Testing later found that Brown could not be excluded as a contributor to DNA recovered under Tybo’s fingernails. Additional testing linked him to DNA on the towel found near her property. On June 8, 2026, police filed a formal murder complaint and secured an arrest warrant. Brown was arrested in Champaign and was being held at the Champaign County Satellite Jail pending extradition to New Mexico.

For Tybo’s family, the case has carried a heavy emotional cost. Relatives said the decades without answers were painful and destabilizing, and they remembered Tybo as kind, the family rock, the person who held everyone together. Police leaders say the case shows how preserved evidence and improved forensic science can still turn a 1983 motel death into a present-day homicide prosecution, with the final step now moving through extradition.